its rounded lines, and
lovely colour--like a slightly overblown rose--were greatly set off by
the simple folds of blue linen; and her feet and legs, shapely but not
small, in their khaki stockings and shoes, completed the general effect
of lissom youth. The flush and heat of hard bodily work had passed away.
She had had time to plunge her face into cold water and smooth her hair.
But the atmosphere of the harvest field, its ripeness and glow, seemed to
be still about her. A classically minded man might have thought of some
nymph in the train of Demeter, might have fancied a horn of plenty, or a
bow, slung from the sunburnt neck.
But the vicar had forgotten his classics. _En revanche_, however, he was
doing his best to show himself sympathetic and up-to-date with regard to
women and their new spheres of work--especially on the land. He had
noticed three girls, he said, working in the harvest field. Two of them
he recognized as from the village; the third he supposed was a stranger?
"She comes from Ralstone," said Rachel.
"Ah, that's the village where the new timber camp is. You really must see
that camp, Miss Henderson."
"I hate to think of the woods coming down," she said, frowning a little.
"We all do. But that's the war. It can't be helped, alack! But it's
wonderful to see the women at work, measuring and checking, doing the
brain work, in fact, while the men do the felling and loading. It makes
one envious."
The vicar sighed. A flush appeared on his young but slightly cadaverous
face.
"Of the men--or the women?"
"Oh, their work, I mean. They're doing something for the war. I've done
my best. But the Bishop won't hear of it."
And he rather emphatically explained how he had applied in vain for an
army chaplaincy. Health and the shortage of clergy had been against him.
"I suppose there must be some left at home," he said with a shrug, "and
the doctors seem to have a down on me."
Janet was quite sorry for the young man--he was so eagerly apologetic, so
anxious to propitiate what he imagined ought to be their feelings about
him. And Rachel all the time sat so silent and unresponsive.
Miss Leighton drew the conversation back to the timber camp; she would
like to go and see it, she said. Every one knew the Canadians were
wonderful lumbermen.
The Vicar's eyes had travelled back to Rachel.
"Were you ever in Canada, Miss Henderson?" The question was evidently
thrown out nervously at a venture, jus
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